Myanmar: American Hurt in Hotel Blast

An explosion struck a hotel in Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, just before midnight on Monday, ripping apart a guest room and wounding one American. It was not immediately clear what had caused the explosion at the 22-story Trader’s Hotel, but it was the latest in a series of unexplained blasts around the country. Assailants planted several bombs across the country in recent days, reportedly killing two people and injuring three others. In the Yangon hotel blast, an American woman, 43, was slightly injured, said a police officer on the scene who declined to be named because he was unauthorized to speak about the episode. An American Embassy official confirmed that one American had been injured and taken to a Yangon hospital, but gave no other details and declined to say whether a bomb had caused the explosion.